U.S. Protestant executive named a president of World Council of Churches

Posted: Friday, July 09, 2004

GENEVA (AP) Bernice Powell Jackson, executive minister of justice ministries for the United Church of Christ, has been named a president of the World Council of Churches.

She was elected by mail ballot as a midterm replacement for the Rev. Kathryn Bannister, a Kansas United Methodist pastor elected in 1998 who resigned for personal reasons.

The world organization chooses seven presidents to interpret its programs in various regions of the world. One usually comes from North America.

Jackson, a longtime social activist, is the U.S. spokeswoman for the World Council of Churches' ''Decade to Overcome Violence'' program during its 2004 focus on the United States.

The World Council lists a constituency of 340 Orthodox, Protestant and independent church bodies that include some 400 million members.

Jackson was formerly executive director of the racial justice commission of the United Church, a denomination with 1.3 million members. Before that she worked on the staffs of New York Gov. Hugh Carey and the National Urban League.